There Will Be Lies

by Nick Lake

  I’m so sorry, he says. I don’t know what happened.

  But I see the lie in his eyes. I think he knows exactly what happened. It’s written there, like closed captions. He didn’t like that I was getting to every ball, that he couldn’t make me miss, that I had no strikes.

  It’s the same thing I noticed last night, with the Boggle, though there it was Jennifer. The same competitiveness. The same urge to fight. Suddenly I am starting to understand why there’s some tension between Michael and James. Super! I think. I have joined a family where the dad will take out a cripple, to show that he’s the man.

  You want to keep going? he asks. He is expecting me to say no, but hoping I’ll say yes, I can see it in his eyes. The hunger. To play, but also to beat me.

  I remember Shaylene again, going to get the ball over and over. Throwing it to me. Not, oh I don’t know, throwing it AT me.

  No, I say.

  You want to go home? To the apartment?

  Yes, please.

  He nods, and then his eyes get a kind of pleading quality. Listen…, he says. He shakes his head. Sorry, that’s a stupid word to use. Um … just, if you mention to Jennifer, about the [ ], she might get worried. Maybe, you know, don’t—

  Don’t mention that you hit me with the ball?

  He swallows. No.

  I look up. It’s still morning, but there’s a thin sliver of moon in the sky, glowing pale and very, very far away.

  I shrug. Whatever, I say.

  Awesome, I think. This is the whole teenage experience in one morning. I’m lying to one of my parents, and I just said whatever to the other one. Plus I’m smoking. I mean, I’ve established that, with Jennifer and Michael.

  So it’s all good.

  My plan.

  I’m golden.

  And after that stuff Michael just pulled with the ball? I’m pretty much decided.

  Chapter 64

  When we get back to the apartment, Jennifer is making some kind of tacos for lunch.

  You two have fun? she asks. I notice that, as hard as all this must be for her, she has still had time to do her makeup immaculately.

  I try to smile. Yes, I say.

  Michael? she asks, concerned.

  It was fine, he says. Just her leg—she pulled it a bit. But she’s okay. Fierce hitter, actually. She could get a baseball scholarship.

  Boggle and baseball, huh? says Jennifer. You’re going to be much in demand.

  I shrug.

  You ever play for a team? says Michael.

  No, I say.

  Of course, he says, slapping his forehead. You were kept pretty much alone, right?

  Yes, I say. But I wouldn’t want to anyway.

  Wouldn’t want to what?

  Play for a team.

  What? says Michael. Why?

  I start to sign without thinking. Then I begin to say the words but it will take too long and my words feel foreign in my mouth, like stones. So I sigh. I pick up a piece of paper from the table, on which Jennifer has been writing some kind of shopping list. She is holding out the pen before I even ask for it.

  I write:

  I play against the ball. I’m not interested in playing against people.

  Michael reads it, his brow creasing into a frown. He shows it to Jennifer. She starts to mouth something at him but then I guess she remembers that I am all about the lip-reading, because she just smiles a not very genuine smile instead.

  You’re so new to us, she says. It’s like we don’t know you at all.

  Yes, I say. It’s true. It’s as if I’m a changeling, like the ones in old stories my (mom) read me, where a human child is taken away and replaced with a fairy. That’s what I am in this family: something strange and foreign, dropped into it.

  Then I think, no. I am a changeling, but I am more than a changeling. I am the child that is taken away, but I am also the child that is put in its place.

  I mean: Angelica Watson was stolen from these people. She was one person, a person I don’t even remember being.

  And now I, Shelby Cooper, have been brought back to them, swapped for her. And I am nothing like these people. I may look more like them than like my— like Shaylene, but I may as well be a fairy, from another world.

  But it’s exciting, Jennifer says, heedless. It’s like learning a language. And it is learning a language! I mean, sign. I’ll need to do a course. We’ll need to do a course.

  I don’t say anything.

  There’s so much to find out about you, she says.

  I still don’t say anything.

  Anyway … um, I’ll just finish fixing lunch. She starts to turn.

  Where’s James? I say.

  He went out to look at some gallery, says Jennifer. A modern … Oh, I don’t know. Something to do with landscapes.

  I look at her, at her crucifix around her neck, her glossy skin, her birdlike hands, fluttering. I think about how there are, presumably, no novels in their house in Alaska. I picture Michael, flicking balls at James in the backyard, raising bruises.

  I might as well be living with aliens. I mean, my— Shaylene is an alien too, I have no fricking idea who she is, other than a liar. But at least she reads. And at least I can speak to her. At least she can sign. One thing I have had enough of: communicating without my hands. It is how a seal must feel, wriggling on a rock. It is all friction, and no smoothness, no quickness of liquid motion.

  Summer is coming back after lunch, says Jennifer. To go through some options.

  What kind of options?

  Oh, I don’t know. Schools. Counseling.

  Fine, I say. I’m going out for a cigarette.

  Jennifer nods, though I can see that she doesn’t like it.

  On my way to the sliding door, I hook up the backpack from the floor where I left it. I open the door and step out onto the little balcony. I look at the rooftops of the town, and I light a cigarette, gasping again when the harshness of it hits my lungs. I watch Jennifer as she busies herself at the cooker, frying something. Michael speaks to her for a while, and I guess maybe they argue, because he throws up his hands, then walks to the bedroom and shuts the door behind him.

  I turn around, back to the view of the city.

  I move quick.

  We’re only three stories up, and there’s no one on the sidewalk below—one person farther down the street, looking in a store window, but that’s it.

  There’s like a gate between the balcony and the fire escape, and I swing myself over it; my leg screams at me, but I don’t stop. I put my hands on the rails and don’t even try to walk down the steps—I just let myself slide, holding my weight up with my arms. The rail burns my hands as I go down.

  At the turn, I hold on to the railing, using it as a crutch, and maneuver myself to slide down the next flight. My hands are red raw, but I tell myself I will let them hurt later, when there’s time for it.

  At the bottom, there’s a drop to the ground—I saw this from the car. I release the ladder, which shoots down and hits the sidewalk. Then I climb down, trying not to use my right leg, though my arms are in agony.

  On the ground, that’s the worst bit—the drop is like a foot from the bottom rung and I land clumsily, because of my injured foot, then hop, but lose my balance and fall. I scrape my hands even more, protecting my face, and kind of crawl or pull myself to my feet.

  I glance up—no one is following me. I hobble down the street. I have no idea where I’m going, but I know I have to get off the sidewalk like YESTERDAY because I’m too slow on this CAM Walker and they’ll catch up with me in no time, once they realize I’m gone.

  I turn a corner and go one block, then I see a bookstore with a green and white striped awning. DOWNTOWN BOOKS says a sign in gold leaf on an old weathered wooden board. I open the door and go in—I see a bell ring above me, but it registers only as a faint ting in my mind, buried under static.

  There’s no one around, though I can just make out a desk over in the gloom to the left, so I make for t
he farther stacks to the right and go behind a big bookshelf, where I can’t be seen from the street. It’s only when I see embroidery on the wall and the framed photo of a guy in a mask that I realize I’m in the Native American section.

  I still can’t see anyone else. If someone heard the bell, they haven’t bothered to check me out. I like that. A place where you can just be. It reminds me of the library.

  Running my fingers along the spines, I scan the shelf. I have to look like I’m browsing. My forefinger settles on a thin, old book. I don’t know why. I pull it out and look at the title. Navajo Creation Myth, I read. The Story of the Emergence. By someone called Mary C. Wheelwright. It’s an ancient book, leather bound.

  Let the book fall open, says Mark’s voice, in my head. At least, I guess it’s my imagination imitating his voice, because aside from anything else I have never heard his voice in the real world.

  I do what he says, though. It’s the story of the flood, I realize. I skim through it, until I see:

  Coyote is present here as the eternal trickster and trouble-causer. But his mischief has a dual effect. It brings the dangerous and negative reaction of the flood, but also, because of the flood, forces the people up into a more complex and promising world.

  I stare at it. What is this telling me? I think. That it’s somehow going to change my life for the fricking BETTER to lose my mom, to lose who I am, and have to go live with strangers? I snap the book shut, slide it back onto the shelf. I walk along a bit, take another one out.

  It’s a collection of Navajo and Apache folktales from Arizona. I stand there and leaf through it. There’s a section on Coyote fighting an evil entity, which sometimes manifests as a giant, sometimes as an owl, sometimes as a Crone.

  Hmm, I think.

  I shrug and put the book back. Suddenly an old guy with white hair and a beard peers around the corner, little round glasses.

  Can I help you? he asks.

  Just browsing, I say with my mouth, as clearly as I can manage—I think so, anyway.

  Navajo tales? he says. He comes and stands next to me. I have an urge to pick up a heavy book and hit him with it. I recommend the [ ], he says.

  I look at him blankly.

  He runs his eyes along the shelf, then selects another thin volume. He hands it to me, and I swear he winks. Then he turns and walks away. He’s like a caricature of a bookstore owner, leather patches on the sleeves of his cardigan. A slight smell of pipe smoke, lingering still.

  I look at the book in my hands. Sitting on the Blue-Eyed Bear: Navajo Myths and Legends, it says. I let it fall open—it seems like the right thing to do—and peer down at the page. I read:

  Coyote has a life principle that may be laid aside, so that any injury done to his body affects his life only temporarily and he may even recover from apparent death.

  I blink.

  I look for the bookstore owner, but he has gone.

  Okay, I think to myself. So Coyote never really dies. He comes back to life. I guess I should have known that. Also he DOES fight the Crone, the Owl, the Giant, whatever. The first book I looked at was pretty clear on that—he DOES stand against that which seeks to destroy people.

  I flick through the book, curious about something.

  Yes: there it is. Eagles and eagle feathers are sacred.

  My head spins. But I didn’t know any of this stuff, I think. I’ve only just read it now. How does that work?

  But I don’t worry about it for long, because I have bigger things to worry about, things like getting away from my birth parents.

  Things like saving the Child, stuck in its prison of glass, its little palace. I feel like, if I can just pick up that child, just once pick up that child and soothe its cries, then I will be whole.

  It’s stupid.

  But it’s what I feel.

  And Coyote might have disappeared under a tide of wolves but that doesn’t mean he’s dead.

  He’s older than the sun and the moon.

  He has died before, and come back.

  And suddenly, I know what I want to do, what I need to do. For the first time in a long time I have some very clear, very defined goals, and they are MY goals now, not just some agenda given to me by someone else, by Mark or a lawyer or my so-called parents or my so-called mother.

  I list them in my head:

  1. Kill the Crone.

  2. Save the Child, and end the fricking dream that has haunted me since I was a child myself.

  3. Get Coyote back. I mean Mark. I mean Coyote.

  4. AND MAYBE. JUST MAYBE. GET SOME FRICKING CONTROL OVER MY OWN LIFE.

  I leave the bookstore. I don’t see the old guy again.

  I walk right past Gene’s Western Wear, on the corner, where Luke bought us those stupid-ass hats.

  I know exactly where I’m going.

  Chapter 65

  I Step from cold outside air into cold air-conditioned air; you can almost feel the difference on your skin; a dog would smell the difference, I think.

  The climbing store is a friendly warren, everything in piles, shelves making little corridors. Brand names I don’t recognize are everywhere; it’s a place that speaks to the climbing cognoscenti, not to me. But at the same time, I know the shape of the language, I am familiar with the structure—like seeing another Indo-European language, laid out on a twenty-six letter grid; you don’t understand it, but it’s familiar.

  I have been in this kind of store before, to buy my baseball bat. I have learned the brand names, only for another sport.

  I don’t see anyone, which is good.

  I go deeper, half expecting a cop to put a hand on my shoulder at any moment. Soon, by accident, I find the books. One end of the shelves is all maps; toward the other end are the instruction manuals, the introductions. I pick one that looks basic, but thick. There’s an index at the back and I flick through it—

  E, for equipment.

  I flick to page 142, scan the paragraphs. Ropes, carabiners. Something called a passive wedge. I don’t have to read it for long before I find camming devices. Yes—that’s what I want.

  They have two semicircular pieces, built on a logarithmic circle, which is important for some reason to do with friction.

  The way they work: you pull a trigger, and the circles align, snug to each other, narrow. They have teeth, to make them bite more. You insert them into a crack in the wall, and you pull on the shaft, which your rope is tied to; they’re spring-loaded, but hinged to the shaft too; the more weight you put on it the more they expand away from each other, dig into the rock on either side.

  Theoretically, then—the harder you fall, the more they hold you.

  There’s a graph, some equations. Applied force, normal force, friction. They’re good for twelve thousand newtons of falling force, the bigger ones. I check some stuff in the appendix and then do the math in my head. Mass, acceleration, spring constant, etc. Long story short, the camming device will hold me easily.

  Okay, good.

  I go to the back of the book again—K for knots.

  I spend a minute or two looking at the right pages. I hate this Girl Scout kind of thing. But I figure I can do it.

  So: a rope, twenty feet, to give me room to get to the top, a couple of carabiners, to attach the rope to the loop, and the other end to me, and a camming device.

  I shuffle down the aisles—there’s a whole wall of the cam things, and I grab the most expensive one; it’s actually a belt with like five of them on it, different sizes. Fine. Rope—easy; carabiners too.

  When I have, in a TOTALLY LITERAL SENSE, got all my shit together, I move to the back of the store. I pass a little checkout, a table with a chair, a white Macbook, and a credit card machine. There’s a copy of American Gods, facedown on the table, a half-full cup of coffee.

  Cigarette break, maybe? Good for me, anyway.

  I pass by, and find the deepest, darkest corner of the store; it’s where there’s snow gear and hats, and it’s summer now so I figure no one�
��s going to come near. I put on a climbing harness, which I just took from a rotating display unit, and tie the rope to one carabiner using what I think is the right knot, then clip the carabiner to the harness.

  I put down my backpack.

  I close my eyes and try very hard to believe that I can just step around the world and into another place.

  203 seconds pass.

  I open my eyes again.

  I calm my breathing. The store is still empty.

  I close my eyes, and I hold my equipment very tightly and—

  Chapter 66

  My left arm is still hooked around the tree stump, and the climbing stuff is in my right hand.

  A warm wind, like breath, runs through my hair from below, tickles the back of my neck. It carries the crying of the Child to my ears.

  I look down, like a moron, and my insides turn to slush.

  Breathe.

  I focus on the rock wall, scanning it. There—just above and to the left, there’s a vertical seam, maybe two inches wide. I loop the loose end of the rope around my neck. I have wound the belt with the cams on it around my wrist, and I select one of the medium ones. My hand is trembling. I pass it to my left hand, while I clip the carabiner to it, and loop the rope through.

  My hand slips, and the cam falls— But it’s on the rope, and the rope spools out a bit from my neck but then stops. I haul the device back up, like a fish on a line.

  Holding the trigger that keeps the half-moons together, I push the thing into the crack: then, when it’s as deep as it’ll go, I pull hard on the rope.

  It holds, like a bolt in hardened cement.

  The rope is already attached to my harness at the other end, so now I’m tied to the rock, and it would take like ten thousand newtons of force to dislodge me.

  I look up. The lip of the canyon is not far above me—maybe like ten feet. My rope is twenty feet. So: I fall, worst case scenario, I fall for thirty feet and then the rope stops me.

  It would hurt. But I could climb up once more, to here, and then try again. Now, when I climb, even though I’m going to be tied to something below me, I’m going to have some insurance. Some latitude. Longitude, I guess, technically.